Building the network a membership opens
An association puts a medical writer among colleagues who work in the same field: at its conferences, in its committees and volunteer work, and in its online groups. The contacts are built by taking part and kept by staying in touch, and members credit them with advice, help, friendships, referrals and much of their work.
The colleagues a membership puts a writer among
A professional association provides a forum for networking and communication, which one EMWA speaker calls the number one benefit of membership, because the other members share the member's field of interest. They can give advice on interesting openings, and networking also lets a member keep up to date on trends in their field, through guest speakers as well as through peers. A contact may be able to help a writer who needs to learn about a prospective client, though the writer needs to be careful with the information they provide.
A former EMWA president called its conferences, which its medical writer members attend, a fantastic opportunity to meet other medical writers, to share questions, problems and difficulties with them, and sometimes to find potential clients or employers. Another former president hopes attendees will consider taking an active part in EMWA's activities, because there is a great network there and it is a great way to talk about the everyday issues members face.
Visibility, collegiality and dialogue
Socialising with colleagues and being known by them as a professional is important. Such visibility amounts to a good reputation and a defined role within a field, whereas a lack of visibility within a profession means isolation, under-appreciation and lack of recognition.
Collegiality is the cooperative relationship between members of a profession who are united in a common purpose and respect each other's abilities to work towards it, and an association can help foster it. Fellow members are usually happy to help, whether the colleague is a well-established professional dealing with a highly technical problem or a new or young member who needs advice on a basic issue such as pay scales. An association's directories of members, its LinkedIn groups and its Twitter accounts are places where members can find fellow members ready to help.
The Brazilian educator Freire advocated dialogue, an exchange of ideas and opinions, as a type of pedagogy, which he believed lets people learn from one another in an environment of respect and equality and which for him was also about making positive changes in the world. An association is an excellent place for discussions and debates on matters of common interest, and such discussions help eliminate the isolation often experienced by freelance writers and translators. Taking an active role in an association allows members to meet new people, put forward ideas, learn to respect the opinions of others, feel useful and take part in a group project.
What members say their contacts returned
When one freelance EMWA member needs a colleague's help because she is too busy or away, she looks for someone in EMWA, since she then knows they speak the same language. She calls being in EMWA a very good business card. Another member, a year after joining, attributed 90% of the work she was getting to EMWA: she had had one client before, everyone else had given her opportunities since, and meeting people face to face at the conference was priceless.
For a member who began attending AMWA's annual conferences in 1974 and by 2009 had led at least one workshop, forum, open session or roundtable at almost every annual conference since 1977, the big dividends of taking part continue to be job leads, but mostly long-lasting friendships with colleagues who, though separated by distance across the country, keep in touch and happily reconnect at conferences.
A freelance medical editor calls joining AMWA in 2000 the single most important thing she did for her career in medical publishing. By 2010 she had taken workshops at every annual conference since joining, and they bolster her confidence, fill in knowledge gaps and provide great opportunities to network in an environment that hardly feels like networking. At each annual conference she has got job leads that turned into her most profitable clients.
A writer who began a company with her husband in 1979, writing for medical and nonmedical clients, reported in 2012 that, in their experience, more than 80% of their business had come through AMWA colleagues, not always directly but through contacts, working relationships, referrals and the like. For many years she worked with a past AMWA president at a pharmaceutical company, both on site and off site, and he introduced her to several people for whom she also did freelance work, two of whom she was still working with many years later. One of them introduced her to another person with whom she had worked for ten years, who in turn recommended her to several colleagues, two of whom had been steady clients for about six years. She traces all of these clients back, like a family genealogy, to her business and personal relationship with that past president.
A freelance of more than 25 years, who joined AMWA in 1989, says that most, or all, of her friends in AMWA are people she met after joining, apart from one neighbour she knew beforehand and now sees once a year through the association. The neighbour, also a member, counts the friendships she has made through AMWA among the things she values most about it, and the two make time for each other at the annual conference. What has always struck the freelance is that people in AMWA are not proprietary: they are willing to give and suggest, rather than refusing to share anything for fear that a colleague will steal one of their clients. Her neighbour holds that giving back is what AMWA is all about, since many members turned to it for its networking and educational opportunities when they were starting their careers, and that those with experience should share what they know about the profession, the things they wish they had known when starting out.
The neighbour's career began when she asked the freelance how she could write and get paid for it. She does not know that she would have found AMWA without the freelance. Shortly after the freelance moved to Florida, someone called her looking for help with a job, and she recommended her neighbour: it was the first job he subcontracted to the neighbour, on magnetic resonance angiography.
Building and keeping the contacts
A network of contacts can be made up of almost anyone a writer has ever met, but the writer should be selective, and having a clear business objective in mind is very important. Once the network is established it has to be kept going, by staying in contact with people, for example through social media or networking events, and connecting online helps a lot with this. Becoming an active member, for example by serving on a committee or volunteering in any of the activities the association runs, may increase a member's chances of meeting people, and it gives colleagues a chance to see the member at work.
Reaching out to strangers and introducing oneself can be intimidating and strange, and an association makes networking easier by hosting events where networking is actively encouraged. Such events are an excellent opportunity to establish long-lasting friendships and collaborations. Many associations also offer formal mentoring programmes, LinkedIn groups, Facebook pages, Twitter accounts and job boards to help members network.
In the experience of one freelance EMWA member, volunteering for the association is a great way to network: EMWA is run by its members for its members, so it always needs volunteers, and working within it gives a volunteer the opportunity to get in contact with lots of people. Being active on social media helps too: taking part in the discussions on EMWA's very active LinkedIn page gets a member's name well known, and writing articles for the journal is another step she would take. The member who had joined a year earlier also found volunteering huge, and suggests that members look for the other organisations around them, more local or related ones that can be found online, since they also offer some possibilities.
One long-serving AMWA member encourages new members to get involved in their chapter, to meet other medical writers who can become their friends and mentors, and to keep attending the annual conference to create a network.
The writer who began a company in 1979 advises that one way to succeed in a career, freelance or not, is to be active in the local AMWA chapter, by volunteering to serve on committees, running for office or helping with a programme. To become known, she advises writing articles for the AMWA Journal and taking part in the discussion lists, attending every AMWA conference even if that means saving all year to pay for it, volunteering to run a breakfast roundtable, design and teach a workshop or serve on an open-session panel, and talking with everyone in classes and in the hospitality room, because a writer never knows whom they will meet who can advance their career.
A writer who became very active in AMWA early in her career offered these tips for making the most of the membership:
- Create a LinkedIn profile and keep it up to date and full of content.
- Check the job boards daily and apply.
- Join a local AMWA chapter and get involved.
- Go to the conferences to learn and to network with peers.
- Use AMWA's online community to connect and collaborate with others.
- Refer to AMWA's salary survey to set appropriate rates.
She recommends reading the posts in the online community daily and joining the conversation, whether to ask questions or to answer others. In her view, the more a writer connects with people, the more they get to know the writer, and there is no knowing where that can lead. Networking has helped her tremendously: in 2019 she was president-elect of AMWA's Southeast Chapter and a member of AMWA's national membership committee.